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Nike’s new World Cup ad feels like a direct response to the AI backlash in advertising & culture (it’s anti- adidas per usual) and it might strike the right chords outside of sports. Behind the Scenes (BTS) has become the new Anti-AI…& in this sense, it has become the actual ad as well.
I think both adi & Nike’s are a bit long, but you only get once every four years so you might as well go for it!
Well done to @nikefootball @wiedenkennedy & all the rest involved 🙌🏼
Transcript
Nike is anti Adidas, but for their new World Cup ad, they're positioned against AI as well. Let's discuss what's happening in public sentiment in the world of advertising creative through the lens of Nike's new World Cup spot. Adidas dropped their big beautiful World Cup film about a month ago. It featured the biggest stars in football, Bad Bunny, and was headlined by Timothee Chalabet, one of the biggest stars in Hollywood now. Many people pronounce Nike dead on worse, but there was some grumbling and criticism about how they used AI David Beckham in key places. A sentiment apparently shared by many college students who booed their commencement speakers just for mentioning AI. And last week, one of the most successful Nike campaigns for Wimby was actually made by a 20 year old design student with artificial intelligence. Even today, ESPN is having to answer for how they used an AI altered image during the finals game last night. It's disorienting to people when they don't know what's real. Couple that with the fear that it might take your job and you have some negative sentiment. We've known since the rise of TikTok that consumers are favoring more real and raw content. Throw your phone on the dashboard, go more analog, shoot it on iPhone, more BTS, more brain rot, more chaotic. Even in my golf marketing agency, we will use a Snapchat intro before we get into the glossy content. So where does that leave Nike and more premium brands? I have had this conversation with marketers almost every week for the last five years. Their woke up ad signaled to me the intersection of anti AI. It shows that we have all of these athletes and entertainers in real life. So in a way, the behind the scenes becomes the ad. They still flex by having the biggest names in football, fashion, music, and culture, but they show them in a very different light. The campaign is called rip the script, something that Nike and their ad agency, Widen and Kennedy, have been battling internally to do for years. I was a part of those efforts as well. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't. I believe that they succeeded in that goal. They even delivered up until the final moment best when we think the kid is gonna go back to the stereotypical trope that he's gonna beat out these players. Nope. Erling Haaland smacks it over his head. Where they did, rip the script. Your final thought here is that behind the scenes is anti AI. Well done, Nike. We knew that if you put your mind to it, you could just do it.
